avast problems after XP system repair

[Eddy]

Remove avast completely.
Doing it through control panel and using aswclear is not doing that.

Delete all folders/files, delete all registry entries.
For several of the registry entries you will need to change the permission before you can delete them.

This tool can be used to find all registry keys > http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/regscanner.html
Don't be surprised if it finds 800+ entries if you search for avast

[davexnet]

OK I'll give it a try.  The second thing, since I just got a used motherboard  & CPU, I'm running some memory diagnostics
to see if anything turns up.

[davexnet]

No memory problems but I did find newer a version of the network adapter driver.  Once that was installed, re-downloaded
the stub installer and avast installed normally.  Could there actually have been a bad driver corrupting the data?
The first version of the driver was from the motherboard manufacturers website, while the newer version came directly from the Realtek site.

All seems OK now

[Eddy]

When replacing certain hardware (e.g. motherboard, CPU), always perform a clean installation of the OS.

[davexnet]

When replacing certain hardware (e.g. motherboard, CPU), always perform a clean installation of the OS.

There's probably not too many users in my situation, ie. upgrade in hardware and still running XP.

I thought about what you said and installed a fresh copy of XP on an old HDD I had laying around
(Maxtor 10 GB UDMA33 drive from 2000).  It took a while but it worked perfectly.

For my two live systems I decided to do the repair install available when booting from the XP CD.
I can report that this also fixed the problem. No more crashes in avast, Firefox, etc, etc.
Thanks Eddy

[Eddy]

You're welcome.